


Funshi

by Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Community: where_no_woman, Dark, Gen, Suicide, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-14
Updated: 2010-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt:  <i>How did Hoshi Sato die on Tarsus?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Funshi

**Author's Note:**

> At the time of this fic, Hoshi is approximately 117 years old.

Federation Standard, Hoshi Sato thinks, twisting her hair into a simple knot, does not have a good word for what she is about to do. The Klingons would term it _HoH'egh_, she supposes, though the phrase does not carry the correct connotations of honorable rebellion. She slips a pin into her hair to hold the stiff, sticky mass off her neck.

The Vulcans also do not have a word for her choice. _Shai-vashaya_, perhaps, though the term applies more to objects -- to starships -- than people. Their history shows that they have occasionally found the act necessary and logical, but she suspects that the urge itself is too emotional, too suspect, to have allowed a word for it to enter their language.

She wonders if the Romulan culture, so much less constrained, has developed an appropriate term since their language diverged from Vulcan.

She stands slowly to prevent dizziness from overwhelming her, and walks over to the neatly made bed, where her Starfleet dress uniform glistens in the early morning light. She remembers when she was afraid to join the fleet. She remembers when she nearly gave it all up and returned to Earth.

She remembers the night before, kneeling in the dirt, forehead pressed to the cool loose soil of Takashi's grave, murmuring her apologies to him and her gratitude that their children and grandchildren had chosen not to come to the colony with them. She had woken there when Tarsus had risen, yellow on the dusky horizon, a fistful of dirt in her bony hand and _atashi mo_ on her lips.

She had not wept. She will not weep. Inside, she rages, but she must conserve her energy for the task ahead.

The dress uniform's fabric is coarse and damp against her sensitive skin, and hangs loosely from her withered frame. Not as impressive as it might have been, but appearances matter. A reminder.

She looks out the window at fields gone barren, though she is weary of looking at dead things. She reaches out to the nightstand, picks up the frame holding the holo of her grandson and his very pregnant wife. The baby will have been born by now, though she will never see the child's image other than in her mind's eye. Her first great-grandchild and a long time in coming. She wonders if the child will have her father's dark eyes, her maternal grandmother's recessive red hair, her paternal great-grandmother's gift with languages. She wonders how she will grow, if she will walk early or late, what her first word will be. She remembers the joy of her own children, and the fire in her stomach grows at the thought of what will happen to the smallest in the colony, those who have not yet starved to death.

She knows the Kirk boy -- the one sent here with his aunt and uncle and their children for reasons he keeps to himself -- is planning something, but she doesn't know what. She hopes his name is not on Kodos' list, though two of his cousins are young enough that she fears their fate. At thirteen, he is old enough to be useful and young enough for Kodos to consider him good breeding stock when the time comes. If the time comes.

She forces her fists to relax. All she has are rumors, but rumors are all she can trust.

She wonders when the roundups will begin. When Starfleet will respond.

She hopes, whatever the boy is planning, he puts it in motion before the killing begins.

She knows, whatever the boy is planning, it will not come soon enough.

Dressed, she wearily rises and walks to the bathroom to regard her image in the mirror. She straightens the seams of her uniform, wishes she had thought to ask if anyone could tailor it to fit the new configuration of her body. Hunger is another memory; she and Takashi had been quietly giving away their rations to others for days before his death, though they had been careful, in unspoken agreement, to maintain the illusion they were keeping some for themselves.

She has been surprised to awaken every morning.

An hour later, she has made her slow way to the colony's central square, to the dais where Governor Kodos will soon announce the names of those to live and those to die. Or, more likely, where he will have someone else post a list, or from where he will begin to round-up those he has chosen to die. She is unsure what chaos he thinks he is preventing. She wonders how he can have learned so little from Earth's history.

His is not the first such solution, after all. Though it is most definitely the child of its predecessors.

_Nam-tor shai-fator kae'amp_, she thinks. _Madness is self-perpetuating._ She is under no illusion that what she is about to do is sane. _Temps désespérés appellent des mesures désespérées._ Desperate times...

Her old bones protest when she lowers herself down onto the wooden planks to sit cross-legged, facing the windows of what would have been called the Governor's Mansion, were it any larger than any of the other colony buildings. The pain is as transient as life, and she can bear aching joints.

She waits.

She regrets the crowd that she draws, though something they see on her face is enough to keep them back, and no one blocks her view of Kodos' dwelling.

She waits until she sees the curtain twitch, until she sees a pale face look back at her, with dark eyes shadowed and hollow as her own, and those of the onlookers. She raises her hand, points an accusatory finger at him. She sees his red eyebrows lift, the scowl of surprise, the widening of his eyes when he registers the object in her other hand.

She strikes the match.

**Author's Note:**

> _funshi_ (憤死, indignation death): any suicide made to state dissatisfaction or protest
> 
> For the Where_no_woman first anniversary ficathon. Beta by shinychimera and rusting_roses.


End file.
